


Love is Blindness

by disillusionist9



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anatomy, Betrayal, Blood Magic, Character Death, Dark Magic, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Mild Gore, No Sex, Rituals, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 18:31:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8024521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disillusionist9/pseuds/disillusionist9
Summary: Hermione can't stop this itch in her bones, and drags Pansy to the depths of hell in her quest.





	Love is Blindness

**Author's Note:**

> For the tumblr femslash weeks, posted 8/9/16, a songfic requested by pumpkin-dream.
> 
> Song: Love is Blindness - U2 (1991 Album: Achtung Baby. Covered by Jack White on the Great Gatsby soundtrack)

Hermione looked up from the stone circle she built, both rough and smooth stones beneath her palms creating a variation of friction that sent a tremor along her arms. Spots of red and gold, rocks collected from mountaintops and shorelines, spiraled out from where she crouched. As goosebumps rose she fought to suppress a shiver. The air was unusually cool, even for late October, and the scroll warned of restrictions on what she could wear while preparing.

For this step, it was nothing.

Though her mind continually rotated through every logical method to disprove it, she'd learned to trust the warnings and clues within the scrolls found in the cellar of the Lestrange manor. Healing apprenticeships reminded her of the stench of death in her hair she couldn't wash out for weeks after battle. Burying herself in the Ministry Archives, or the project to rebuild the Library of Alexandria, made her feel as though she were hiding. Curse breaking was near enough to repenting for her sins.

But, as black nails, filed to near-deadly points, dug into her scalp and twisted her hair around pale fingers, she learned salvation in the breaking of things. The breaking of people.

The links of rope around her neck swung and rubbed against the over-sensitized skin on her arms, and she turned to watch the woman tied at the other end move to complete her half of the spiral. Where Hermione's were ambers, crimsons, and deep browns stained by the mud of ancient bogs, Pansy's swirled in an ocean of blues, greens, and sun-bleached whites. Patterns atop the earth razed free of foliage in several meters in each direction, the stones shone like stars on the charred ground. Stonehenge appeared through the fog for a moment, to be swallowed again with the next gust of wind.

With fingertips sooty and frozen, she moved to trace the lines of Pansy's spine, counting each vertebrae from the atlas to the last lumbar she could feel beneath the sinewy tissue above. Something like pride, or love, or greed, any number of sins flooded the hollow spaces between her ribs as lines of script ran from her blackened fingers to her lover's back. Turning so her raven witch could press the same pleas of deliverance to her, the contrast of their skin tones stark in the grey, early morning light.

The waiting was more painful than the sting of impending frostbite to their toes. Back to back, the witches lay with their fingers knotted and knees bent, completing the circle of stones and ignoring the itching awareness of _other_. They weren't calling the _other_. They were calling  _Him._

Shaking, not from fear or cold, blinded by the brilliance of the sun cutting through the fog, both witches grasped at their lover's body for purchase, seizing until the ropes around their necks rubbed them raw wherever they touched bare skin. Unforgiving spines along the ropes, stolen from the deck of a ship tossed ashore a distant island, bit and tore like an animal. Both keened in pain, unable to part their lips into screams. Uncoiling from the intricate knots, the ropes forced their way into the ground beneath them, pulling until the imprints of their forms molded into the ash and dirt. Pulling pulling _pulling_ until they could take no more.

Then fingers. Fingers replaced the coarse ropes. Fingers smoothed their hurts until only fading bruises remained.

Pansy caught her breath first, great gasping pulls into her lungs as her torso shot up from the ground. In the dawn, out of the corner of her eye, she could see the color of Hermione's hair shift from cacao to reveal the strands of amber Pansy would search for when the witch writhed beneath her. Like watching a plum decay in reverse, the fingers smoothing the pain from their bodies bloomed from rotting corpse, to the flesh sewing itself back to the bones.

"You've done well," the corpse said, once the lips were reattached and the teeth had crawled up the ribs into the jaw.

As the fingernails reappeared, the hand closest to Hermione reached out to firmly press into her jaw, turning her head this way and that. She held the eyeless gaze of the man reassembling himself until the last lash regrew from the lids.

"Hermione," he said, his voice a caress compared to the rough grip of his hand. He slowly released the pressure as she stared him down, no longer confused or afraid. She was hungry, and the look in her eyes made his reborn lips stretch across perfect teeth with manic glee.

Pansy watched them devour each other with their gazes, drowning in their obsession with each other, as her gasping grew shallower and choked. She'd been blind, used completely, and was claimed by the earth as repayment as her soul fueled the birth of platelets and marrow and sinew in the new body of Tom Riddle. Her body sunk into the earth as the Dark King and Queen rose from their knees, ashes and stones rising to form cloaks of night over their naked shoulders.


End file.
